■45;] 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Dec. 15. 1882. 



MtimattYl that thoro are upwards of 100,000 in the whole 

 of the United States, certain small towns with a popula- 

 tion le!is than 1,000 havinj; .10 to ."iO suWriWers. Con- 

 s«>quent!y, in these latter places, there is a telephone to 

 every -U inhabitant.s : wliile in New York and Zurich it 

 is 1 to 200 : in New York, 1 to 500 : Brussels, 1 to SOO ; 

 Parig, 1 to 1,000; liorlin, 1 to .'.OOO ; London, 1 to 3.000; 

 «nd St Petersburg, 1 to 4,000. 



We learn from the A'.ii/io/y Jy- (Chicago) tliat the 

 Northern Pacitio llailway is to run for some hundreds of 

 miles und-r the shade of tries, plantttl to proUct it from 

 storms and suowdrifis on the open prairies. The company 

 has set a large force af men to work at planting them, and 

 is offHrina; every inducement to the settlers on its property 

 along tlie line to cultivate forestry. 



Ik a leading article on the novelist whom we have just 

 lost (and, for our own part, wo deem such a loss far more 

 serious to the world than many others al>out which much 

 more is said), the Tiiws makes the startling assertion that 

 it is witlj Anthony Trollopc's "Mr. Crawley" that Miss 

 Austen's "5Ir. Collins" must be compared, and leaves 

 the impression that " Mr. Crawley " is a development 

 in recent times of the " Mr. Collins " of Miss 

 Austen's days I Could false criticism go much further 

 than this 1 Could two characters, both clerical, be 

 imagined much more unlike than the two here ! If it 

 had Jieen Collins and Slope ; but Collins and Crawley ! — 

 not contrasted — but compared! Crawley, whoso worst 

 faults were better than Mr. Collins's best virtues^suppos- 

 ing for the sake of argument that he had any positive 

 virtues. W'e all «{ us love Mr. Crawley, even when we 

 fe<-l how mucli more truly brave was that dear wife of 

 his ; but as for Mr. Collins, one feels it would be a relief 

 to si-c something in Mr. Collins worthy of so positive a 

 feeling as hatred. \Vhat marvellous bits of drawing they 

 both are '. But it angers one to think that the man who 

 could draw as Trollope did here, should have left so many 

 crude and imperfect sketches. 



I IIAVK long owed Mr. Walter Besant " one." I was in 

 New Ztraland, travelling from l)unedin, where I had given 

 what I fondly regarded a.s a most successful course of 

 lectures, to C'hristchurcb, where afterwards I was as 

 pleasantly ruceived. I was " recuperating," j/ior/- wco, by 

 light reading, the particular book 1 was reading being the 

 'M;olden Butterfly." Alas, in full enjoyment of this most 

 enjoyable book, I was suddenly eoiifoimded, — slapped, 

 figuratively, in the face, — by finding my vocation (or one of 

 my vocations) include*), amongst others, as illustrations of 

 the dreariest human experiences. " One might as well," 

 wrot*>, in efP-ct, Mr. Besant (f acpiit the lat<! Mr. Rice) 

 " talk of enjoying a lecture on astronomy, or " — so forth 

 and so forth. And now, at the begininng of his Christ- 

 ma.« story, " Let Nothing Yon J>ismay," Mr. Besant savs 

 the kun row exactly at four (in North England), early in 

 May. L'niew a very wide meaning is given to the word 

 "early," th« sun could have don.; nothing of the sort, 

 thoogli he riwn earlier there than in I>oiidon (in May). 

 True, a few pages lat»5r,the Fugleman implies (on the same 

 day; that it in j/O-st the middle of .May. Ifut that is not 

 my affair, any more than in the circumstances that Drury 

 says "Hslihs ey<-M are blue" in one place, and a page or 

 two further on that they are brown. I stand by the first 

 •tateroent that "irlij in May tli«! sun rose exactly at four ; 

 and mainUin that this could not well have happened. 



In the same pleasant story, by the way (for it should be 

 hardly necessary to say that my wrath against Mr. Besant 

 is not very warm — so that 1 still Uxkv pleasure in his 

 stories), the mistake into which — so far as I can see — 

 iilmost every one falls, is made of giving tlio opening lines 

 of the familiar Christmas Carol thus — 



(iod rest you, merry KenHomcn, 

 Let iiotliinj^ you disinny. 



The original carol said nothing about " merry gentlemen," 

 nor anything so meaningless as " God rest you : " but ex- 

 pressed simply the wish — 



God rest you merry, Konllenicn : 

 as William, in "As You Like It" (Act. v., sc. 1), says, 

 " God rest you merry, sir," not " God rest you, merry sir." 



"Ax Observer" has sent us a response to o\ir first note 

 on corset-wearing ; unfortunately it reached us (owing to 

 our absence from town on lecture-tour) too late for this 

 number. It shall appear next week. " An Observer," 

 like ourselves, is seeking to inculcate what is best, and 

 though we do not agree with his conclusion, much that ho 

 notes in the course of his skilful advocacy of a — well, a 

 difficult cause, is well worth noting. 



TiiK objects of the Rational Dress Society (President, 

 Viscountess Harberton) are to promoter the adoption, ac- 

 cording to individual taste and convenience, of a stylo of 

 dress based upon considerations of health, comfort, and 

 beauty, and to deprecate constant changes of fashion, which 

 cannot be recommended on any of these grounds. An 

 annual subscription of 2s. Gd. constitutes niemV)ership. 

 Hon. secretary, Mrs. E. M. King, 'M, Cornwall-road, 

 Bayswater. 



Very misleading statements have; been pretty generally 

 made by newspaper writers and others as to the danger 

 incurred by those " fairies" at the Savoy Theatre who are 

 nightly electrically illuminated ; and their ignorance on 

 such matters is manifested by the assertion, amongst others, 

 that the lamp on each fairy's head is supplied with elec- 

 tricity from an accumulator. Such an idea is simply ridi- 

 culous. As a matter of fact, each of these Savoy sylphs is 

 supplied with electricity (generated as required, and not 

 stored) by means of three specially-constructed Planto 

 batteries enclosed in a gutta-percha case. The whole 

 apparatus, which weighs less than three pounds, is 

 worn after the manner of a soldier's knap.sack, and 

 is connected with the lamp by a flexible double 

 wire. This arrangement is the joint production of the 

 Swan and Siemens companies, but at present capable of 

 mucli improvement in the matters of weight and the 

 number of cells employed. A switch is placvid on the top 

 of the battery by means of which thrj current may be 

 turned ofi' at pleasure ; and the light produced is equal to 

 that of six candles. From this it will be seen that the 

 wearer of the lamp runs no risk. Ihere is no current cap- 

 able of giving a severe shock, and practically there is no 

 more danger from contact with the conducting wires than 

 tliere is in walking under an ordinary telegraph wire. The 

 statfiments we have referred to are amongst the least ex- 

 travagant that have been made on this subject. It seems 

 there was a notion that these "fairies" were lighted by a 

 wire from the main dynamo machine which illuuiijiates the 

 entire building. — ,S'<. Jameaa GaznUc. 



Answkhs to ConuKSPONDENTs are, as soon as possible, to 

 be permanently restricted to a column in length. 



